Detail

Here is a detail of the section that shows young love as in "Will you marry me?"

America Celebrates

This is one of the hardest things I have done in a long time. I was invited to be part of a traveling exhibit whose theme was America Celebrates. After looking over the list of open holidays I chose Earth Day, which I thought was a theme that I could easily work with.

A few days later I got an email that that had already been chosen. Looking over the remaining topics I rashly chose Valentine Day. I was thinking of the box of antique valentines I had from my grandmother and mother. All winter I agonized of this...how to present "love" in a non Hallmark way.

I began by making several small works in my normal style with shadowy figures. This is the result of that experiment. It is meant to celebrate love throughout life...from earliest friendships with friends, and relatives.....though the enduring love of 50+ years.

SAQA Auction

SAQA is having its annual auction of one foot square art quilts. It is a great opportunity to own wonderful piece of fine art.

The auction will begin on September 10th. So I encourage you all to go to the SAQA web site and look at all the wonderful works. My donation "The Promise" is on the top left side on page three!

I will try and feature one of two pieces per day up until the auction! So watch for tomorrows post!

http://www.saqa.com/

click on benefit auction and enjoy!

SAQA conference

Greetings from Athems, Ohio. I am here working with Desiree Vaughn who is the conference coordintor.

Monday through Wednesday are the pre-conference workshops. Two of the workshops are being held at the Dairy Barn. The others at the Baker Center at Ohio University.

Today was a beautiful, warm spring day, with peony's in full bloom and the birds singing their hearts out.

Desi and I just returned from a visit to the Dairy Barn classes. The students were ecstatic about what they were learning and doing. The Shibori class.s walls were draped in colorful dyed fabrics...and the design clause's walls were covered with wonderfully complex exercises. The energy was amazing! For additional information see Sue Dennis's blog...she is a student in the design class

Musings on this day

As the chair of Studio Art Quilt Associates' exhibition committee part of my job has grown to include some educational issues. These are issues that we face as an organization , and as individual artists. Today one of the issues I have been trying to address is how we contract with art venues like museums and galleries concerning how the exhibition is to be hung.

Initially I was surprised to learn that some of these institutions have no idea about how to hang a fiber exhibit. The problems we have experienced include double hanging of work, work hung with very little space between work, and movable walls spaced in such a manor as to preclude adequate room to view larger work.

To help with these issues when approaching a venue where we are trying to place an existing exhibit we inform them of our guidlines which include minimum liner footage needed for the exhibit. This calculation includes a minimum of 24"-36" between work. It also stipulates that no work is to be double hung. If the prospective venue is interested in an exhibit, these are included in the contract between the institution and SAQA.

In additions we are including these in our curator documents. If a SAQA member contacts a venue it is important that they bring up these guidelines in their discussions. Ultimately it effects the number of works that the curator would be asking a juror to select. Jurors should be given the liner footage available. This allows the juror to make a selection that is cohesive for the space. In some instantes a minimum number of quilts could be suggested.

more on this later this week

Leaving

Well all good things must come to an end. I will miss the sunny warm days in Arizona. The roses and, the palo verde trees are in full bloom . The desert is turning green, pecan trees are flooded and I can see some the cactus flowers.

My winter time has been productive, but I am ready to head home and work in my studio. Lost of ideas to make new fabric...and new quilts.

The drive across the country looks ok...two good days and two fair days. Jer and I like to stop a lot along the way...so if things turn bad we will just hole up and wait it out.

Friends in Michigan say today is the last big snow predicted....after that just the wet slushy stuff followed by brown....hopeful spring will get serious soon.

A Walk in the desert

Yesterday Jerry and I drove up towards Phoenix to meet Becky. We met her in Maricopa....just south of the city and drove about 25 miles to the Maricopa Wilderness. The Wilderness area is thousands of acres of land and is home to a section of the old Butterfield Trail

We were both happy and sad to find that the wilderness area is closed to all motorized vehicles/ Happy because in the past few years we have noted a huge increase in off road vehicle damage. And sad because we would not have enough time to hike, nor were we prepared to the areas we wanted to share with Becky

We did walk for a few miles....and saw a lot of beautiful scenery.

I could not resist in taking a photo of the old cactus ribs and spines....decaying with new life growing all in the same spot. If you click on the image at the right you will see tiney white and yellow flowers growing amoung the old cactus spines and skin.I continue to be fascinated with the shapes one finds in nature.

Reorganiztion

I spent time yesterday updating my web site. I hope that it is more logical now. I have changed the "gallery" page to include all catagories of work...landscapes, statements, abstract, small works etc.
I also included 5 new poieces. Three in the small works section and two in the reflections series.
The Promise has been sent to the SAQA office for inclusion in our September, 2009 auction. The other two are for sale .

Take a look....click on gallery and see the new work and let me know if the site works better!

http://www.pegkeeney.com/